Tricycle Daily Dharma August 30, 2013

Good Anger Anger that is motivated by compassion or a desire to correct social injustice, and does not seek to harm the other person, is a good anger that is worth having. - The Dalai Lama, "The (Justifiably) Angry Marxist"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 29, 2013

The Best Possible Habit What is your automatic reflex to life situations, especially difficult ones? Do you think about yourself and how you might profit or escape from a situation? Or do you think about others and how you can help? Progress on the path, and a sign that you’re well prepared for death, occurs when the former changes into the latter, when you default not into selfishness but into selflessness. - Andrew Holecek, "The Best Possible Habit"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 28, 2013

A Powerful Motivation When I think of the Buddhist precepts, which are ethical precepts, they are all about relationships. I’ve boiled them down to one: vowing to live in a way that is not at the expense of other beings. In a sense it’s very grand and impossible, but it’s also a really powerful motivation. - Alan Senauke, "Wrong Mindfulness"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 27, 2013

On Awareness Awareness cannot be taught, and when it is present it has no context. All contexts are created by thought and are therefore corruptible by thought. Awareness simply throws light on what is, without any separation whatsoever. - Toni Packer, "Unmasking the Self"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 26, 2013

Waking up to our Responsibility As Buddhists, we might see the task of preserving the world’s food system as entailed by our commitment to the twofold good: to achieving our own good from a pragmatic concern for our own long-term welfare, and to promoting the good of others from a compassionate concern for those whom our actions may affect, whether they be our contemporaries or generations as yet unborn. - Bhikkhu Bodhi, "Into the Fire: Food in the Age of Climate Change"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 25, 2013

Greed for Peace I contemplated my greed for peace. And I did not seek tranquillity anymore. - Ajahn Sumedho, "A Contemplation"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 24, 2013

The Practice of Everything In reality, everything is potentially a means to awakening. It is simply a matter of seeing this and knowing how to apply each thing in each particular case. Bodhisattvas practice skillful means to help all beings without exception to awaken. There's nothing that can't be part of a program for awakening. Everything is practice. - Norman Fischer, "Revealing a World of Bliss"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 23, 2013

Like an Archer Like the archer straightening his arrow and perfecting his aim, the practitioner of meditation straightens out the mind while aiming his or her attentional energy at its object. Learning to drop what we’re doing, however momentarily, and to genuinely pay attention in the present moment, without attachment or bias, helps us become clear, just as a snow globe becomes clear when we stop shaking it and its flakes settle. - Lama Surya Das, "The Heart-Essence of Buddhist Meditation"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 22, 2013

The Reality of Love The problem with interpersonal love is that you are dependent on the other person to reflect love back to you. That’s part of the illusion of separateness. The reality is that love is a state of being that comes from within. - Ram Dass, “Tuning the Mind”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 21, 2013

Avoiding Strained Practice With interest and investigation there’s wisdom. Effort alone, without wisdom—the way people generally understand it—is associated with strained activity because it is usually motivated by greed, aversion, and delusion. Effort with wisdom is a healthy desire to know and understand whatever arises, without any preference for the outcome. - Sayadaw U Tejaniya, “The Wise Invesigator”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 20, 2013

Thoughts in Meditation We have to be careful not to think that meditation is about getting rid of thoughts. On the contrary, I would say that meditation helps us to creatively engage with our thoughts and not fixate on them. - Martine Batchelor, “Meditation, Mental Habits, and Creative Imagination”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 19, 2013

Training the Mind Training involves not just one single method but many methods. It's like building a huge airplane. It takes so many pieces that all have to fit together to make it work. In the same way the transformation of our minds—or setting the right kind of mental attitude—takes time. - His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Ethics for a Secular Millennium"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 18, 2013

Loneliness Suffering is what happens when we are lonely and forget that we participate in the world. People often complain about love, or at least about its consequences, but welcoming the consequences is part of the game of generosity. The earth gives a Yes without regard to what is given back, and being a human is also a gift, not a purchase. Even the No’s we get are gates to the generosity of the world. - John Tarrant, “The Erotic Life of Emptiness”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 17, 2013

Spiritual but not Religious? The way ‘spirituality’ is often used suggests that we exist solely as a collection of individuals, not as members of a religious community, and that religious life is merely a private journey. It is the religious expression of the ideology of free-market economics and of the radical 'disencumbered' individualism that idolizes the choice-making individual as the prime reality in the world. - Robert Bellah, “Future of Religion”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 16, 2013

How to Let Go In practice there is always the dance between feeling the truth of our suffering and letting go of it, not in a dismissive way but in a way that honors it. - Tracy Cochran, “Does Race Matter in the Meditation Hall?”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 15, 2013

The Self in Self-Help Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing inner forces: what they think they should do versus what they are doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are; whether they think they’re right and worthy or wrong and unworthy. The separate self is just the conglomeration of these opposing forces. When the self drops away, inner division drops away with it. - Adyashanti, “The Taboo of Enlightenment”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 14, 2013

A Moral Politics Given that government, in theory at least, is our common will, representing us as a people, how do we define ourselves? Will we come to the aid of those among us struggling to get by or will we throw the needy back upon their own meager resources? Is the prevailing philosophy of governance one of mutual concern and collective help, or one of stark individualism in which everyone has to fend for themselves, or at best rely on charity? This is not so much a political question as a moral one, a question pertaining to the moral basis of our common life. Much depends on how we answer it. - Bhikkhu Bodhi, "A Moral Politics"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 13, 2013

Cutting Out Attachments The purpose of Buddhism is to cut down anger, hatred, and jealousy. The way you do it is very simple. If you cannot handle an attachment, then you completely cut out whatever helps the attachment grow. - Gelek Rinpoche, "A Lama For All Seasons"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 12, 2013

The Gate of Not-Okay The only thing that can make us uncomfortable with being alone is not liking who we are. That’s what we do when we face the wall: we face who we are. Being okay with however that arises is the most compassion and the most honesty you can ever offer yourself—to just accept yourself as you are. Even if you don’t like it, that’s okay, because not-okay is always a practice gate. We can always include what we don’t like in ourselves. But letting go of worrying about having to become perfect: that’s a gift that we give to ourselves. - Merle Kodo Boyd, "Okay As It Is, Okay As You Are"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 11, 2013

Not Clinging to Pleasant States We like pleasant meditative states. There's no problem with the pleasantness of them; it's part of our life experience. The problem is that we often devote our life energy to the getting, sustaining, accumulation, and repeating of these pleasant experiences. But, as we all know, these pleasant experiences don't last, so they don't really have the capacity to bring us happiness, to bring us completion, to bring us fulfillment. We're always seeking more—that's samsara, the endless wheel of becoming, fueled by wanting. - Joseph Goldstein, “One Dharma”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 10, 2013

Regarding Doubt We feel that if we have doubts, it means that we are denying the teachings and that we should really have unquestioning faith. Now in certain religions, unquestioning faith is considered a desirable quality. But in the Buddha-dharma, this is not necessarily so. Referring to the dharma, the Buddha said, 'ehi passiko,' which means 'come and see,' or 'come and investigate,' not 'come and believe.' - Ani Tenzin Palmo, “Necessary Doubt”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 9, 2013

Continuous Mind If we believe that mind is continuous, our love for others becomes continuous. If we recognize this continuity, we do not trust temporary, tangible circumstances or take them too seriously. - Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, "Continuous Mind"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 8, 2013

On Gender There’s a strong streak of anti-essentialism in feminism, just as there is in Buddhism. It is the understanding that something like gender is not fixed or absolute, that not all women or men have some masculine or feminine essence that defines us. To put it in Buddhist terms, gender has no 'self-nature.' - Nancy Baker, "Of Samurai and Sisterhood"

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 7, 2013

Genuine Discernment The fundamental aim of Buddhist practice is not belief; it’s enlightenment, the awakening that takes place when illusion has been overcome. It may sound simple, but it’s probably the most difficult thing of all to achieve. It isn’t some kind of magical reward that someone can give you or that a strong belief will enable you to acquire. The true path to awakening is genuine discernment; it’s the very opposite of belief. - Trinlay Tulku Rinpoche, “The Seeds of Life”

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 6, 2013

Don't Make Your Suffering Worse In a classic sutra, the Buddha had said that if someone shoots you in the foot, don’t pick up the bow and shoot yourself in the foot again. Don’t make your suffering worse by arguing with what’s so. That’s a second arrow. Accept pain. Don’t criticize yourself, or others, for feeling pain: that is a second arrow. Don’t regret what cannot be changed, or try to predict what cannot be known. - Katy Butler, "A Life Too Long"